Arabella the Traitor of Mars (David D. Levine)

Arabella the Traitor of Mars
The Adventures of Arabella Ashby, Book 3
David D. Levin
Tor
Fiction, YA? Adventure/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: After helping defeat Napoleon in the Battle of Venus, inventor Arabella Ashby and her husband Captain Singh are hailed as heroes of England, ridding the solar system of a tyrant bent on interplanetary domination... and opening the way for others to follow his example. Shortly after their return to Earth, the Prince Regent offers Singh the opportunity to head a fleet bound for Mars, to bring the planet and its natives to heel under the British flag (and, not incidentally, generate enormous profits for the Regent and the Honorable Mars Company.) Torn between the planet of her birth and her patriotic duty, between her home and her husband, Arabella chooses Mars. But beating the invaders to her homeworld will just be the first daunting challenge ahead, and this time luck may no longer be on Lady Ashby's side.

REVIEW: The (probable) final installment of the Arabella Ashby adventures brings the action back to Mars and squarely addresses Earth's colonial attitude toward the solar system. Araballa, herself a human but more at home on Mars than Earth, is particularly torn, feeling a close kinship to the Red Planet and its people but forced to acknowledge that, as a human, she is - if in some small way - part of the problem. Threading that needle, personally and politically, proves challenging, but Arabella's always been one to rise to a challenge, if not without some failures on the way. Unlike the second novel, this installment (thankfully) trims much of the transit, focusing more on the action. Arabella also isn't quite as helpless for so much of the book; in the thick of battle, and dealing with machinery and clockwork automata, she's back in her element. The action picks up quickly and keeps going through much of the book, and if now and again dangers are telegraphed and luck tends to favor the heroes (if at the last minute), well, it is written in the spirit of retro adventure tales. Something about the ending feels a little neat and quick after the high cost of reaching it, while the epilogue gives the series (or at least this portion of it) a nice send-off. Overall, I enjoyed this story, and the whole Arabella Ashby trilogy, as a fun, fantastical take on retro-flavored adventure science fiction.

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